


A Carnival comes to Pine Cliff

by DBleazard



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Carnival, Pine Cliff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-09
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-24 18:15:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2591366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DBleazard/pseuds/DBleazard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It is rumored that our neighbors in Pine Cliff once welcomed a traveling carnival. Pine Cliff is now inhabited only by ghosts."<br/>Backstory for Pine Cliff, and why they're only inhabited by ghosts. Written like a transcript to a broadcast from Pine Cliff's radio, I've named the radio announcer Lily.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Carnival comes to Pine Cliff

I'm a fleeting being, living in a fleeting world. It's irrefutably neat, being made of blood and meat. Welcome to Pine Cliff.

 

The sun looks down from the clear, blue sky like a black eye looks down from the fur of a great beast. We cower under cover from the heat, giving back liquid from our skin we stole from the earth. Only those enjoying a round on the Eternal Rock Golf Course, run by friendly local citizen Betty Sampson, are braving the outside world today.

 

Speaking of Betty Sampson, last week she announced an upcoming golf tournament today! Lars Leavengood – out from the edge of town – is there to uphold his title as Town Golfer for the third year running, keeping his job on the edge of town hitting any who threaten us with high-speed, sharpened golf balls. As the first, last and only line of defence we have against outsiders is taking the day off today, citizens are doubly expected to remain indoors, to escape the invasions of both the sweltering heat and potential outsiders.

 

Let's pause here for a quick word from our sponsors.

 

As human beings, we are naturally omnivores. Our molars crush, and our canines and incisors slice. We eat vegetables, fruit, insects, bricks, mammals, et cetera. Theoretically, a human can eat anything it likes within the constraints of how wide their jaw can open, and how heavy a food item they can lift.

Here at Einar's Diner though, we use only the finest, state of the art equipment to cut our food into little pieces you can fit into any jaws defined by biologists as human. Here at Einar's Diner, you can eat anything. Anything. Anyone.

Of course, it's pretty hard for us to stock everything and everyone in advance, so please let us know a day or two in advance what you'd like. You can find our menu by looking at your phonebook, world map, mirror, or nearby encyclopedia.

 

Einar's Diner. Order or _be ordered_.

 

Intern Vieno, please could you go report on the tournament today? Thank you. Vieno is our new intern, ladies and gentlemen and all aside, after the loss of intern Samina last week. Samina had a run-in with the unruly tarantulas in down-town on Thursday, and her after her injuries were deemed untreatable, she asked to be ceremoniously planted on the edge of the cliffs. She has joined the lines of eternal pine trees that watch over the desert below the cliffs that make up the borders of our town, whispering to citizens on the inside who pass. A gentle reminder to all listeners whilst we are on the topic, to please not go outside the thick forests protecting us from the sandy wasteland. Doing so is violation of multiple laws enforced by the Conifer Council, as is climbing the trees. Please find another, non-pine tree within the city to climb if you are working towards your lifeform-scaling badge in the Scouts, or a tall human consenting to the ascension.

 

Dearest listeners, the hot desert wind rolls in from the North. Trees creak in the wind, and pine needles flutter into the streets from the great conifers protecting us. Somebody – or something – is coming to Pine Cliff from the devoid, sandy lifeless wastelands. Vieno is telling me that Lars Leavengood – out from the edge of town – is currently on the first hole of the Eternal Rock Golf Course, where he has completed the trigonometry section of the hole and is now advancing to bricklaying, two under par.

 

Vieno has further reported that they have spotted Camila the Geologist playing the first hole, and she has completed trigonometry on par. Vieno has confirmed that Camila looks absolutely perfect, her hair and stone khaki jacket shifting flawlessly in the quiet breeze. Best of luck to Camila, Lars, and all other golfers out on the course today.

 

Um... listeners... I have received several calls and well-thrown paper planes saying that Salvage Street is sounding a bit strange today. Cheap speakers are playing tacky outdated music, machines are slowly humming and whirring into action, and people are strolling about the streets in disregard of warnings to stay inside and avoid the outsiders. Amongst those people are... that guy, and, oh good old, what's her name again?

 

I'll be honest listeners. I don't recognise anyone out on the streets. The air is waving and shimmering as it rises from the old, greying cracked tarmac of Salvage Street that is fooling some into thinking it is water. Air is weird, huh? I know we all act weird when it gets too hot, but personally waving around and distorting what's behind me isn't really my thing. I, as in all temperatures, continue to bring clarity to all around me, for you all to see.

 

Camila, I am being told, has successfully completed the third hole of the Eternal Rock Golf Course. Gnomes lie strewn across the green, Betty Sampson walking through to bayonet the wounded. Lars Leavengood – out from the edge of town – has also completed the third hole, and the golfers are all moving on to the fourth hole, which will bring them through this very studio room.

 

Citizens peering out of their blinds into Salvage Street report a great, turning circle. They report tables with fabric roofs, the cracked wooden surface covered in confectionery and stuffed animals. They report that what they see... is a carnival.

 

Pine Cliff, I have only heard of carnivals. I have only heard of them in cautionary tales and horror stories, whispered by the fire in a campfire horror story. I have no idea what they want from us, or what they want to do to us. It is rumoured that our sister city, Night Vale, once welcomed a carnival. Night Vale is now only inhabited by the living.

But we, Pine Cliff, are surrounded by our dead in the eternal whispering pines, and we must defend ourselves from this monstrosity.

 

However, I would like to once again remind you all that nobody may actually leave their home. Please look out of your windows disapprovingly at the outsiders, or stick a piece of paper to your window with “NO” written in a thick, black, scrawl. Keep all pets, citizens and unwanted parasites within your homes until the danger has passed. Stay by your radios until the awful beings leave, and let Pine Cliff remain as silent as a ghost town until they have gone.

 

Wait, listeners? Betty Sampson's Eternal Rock Golf Course tournament is still in full flow. Vieno is reporting that they are watching Camila, Lars and other golfers send their golf balls just over the road from me now! Luckily, we are far from Salvage Street here, but upon reaching the sixth hole they will head back to the golf course itself via an alternate route – right down Salvage Street. I hope the wind is strong enough to send their shots over the danger, Pine Cliff. All on Salvage Street, please open your windows and exhale northward to save our valiant golfers.

 

But stay near enough to those radios, Pine Cliff, and I will steel your hearts and empower your lungs... with [the weather.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0XSqhozMHo)

 

We return from the weather, unaffected by the unknown outsiders' assault on our town. Betty Sampson's Eternal Rock Golf Course tournament was uninterrupted by the carnival's arrival, Lars Leavengood – out from the edge of town – defending his title for the third year in a row after an absolutely incredible hole-in-sixteen on the bottomless pit course, par indefinite. Lars held up his blood-soaked golf club in both hands like a primitive tribal warrior holding a spear aloft after a hard-won battle, clutching the trophy close to his chest with his other four hands. His hands were... listeners, Lars' hands looked unusual. Our intern, Vieno, only says they looked unusual. Normally, of course, Lars has iridescent hands of all colours we know, and some we do not, which beautifully contrast his invisible body. However, Vieno is reporting that Lars has become... translucent. Vieno reports that they can only see a greyish blotch, distorting the shape of the course behind Lars like hot air rising from tarmac pretending it is water. Like the product of a mirage.

 

Listeners, did anybody see the carnival... leave? They are certainly not still here, as we can no longer see them where we left them, but where have they gone? Nobody called to report they had actually driven away, via the smooth-coated only road in and out of town, Route 51. Or arrive, for that matter. Were they only a mirage in the imposter tarmac? The surface of Salvage Street has been quite mischievous this passing month.

 

Oh my, listeners. Vieno has told me from the golf course that they are beginning to notice that everyone else seems to have become translucent like Lars Leavengood – out on the edge of town – including Vieno themselves. I am looking down at my hands now, and seeing that they have become defined only by transparent grey shimmering, like roiling steam from a pot of simmering water. The table I sit at to report all of town's doings waves, as if my hands are hot air from a mirage.

 

Reports are coming in that, all over town, citizens of all Pine Cliff are noticing they and their loved ones have become ghostly, grey clouds. Some are shrieking from their houses that this is our end, some rolling on the floor or huddling under blankets in fear of dissipating into the hot, communally shared air that could become our mass grave.

 

Pine Cliff, I feel my ghostly body with my ghostly hands, and I see from the window what we have become. The eternal trees lining the cliffs around the edges of town, rising up as a beacon of life in an endless desert of empty death, are whispering to us. We have become the sky, we have become air that waves in the heat of the sun. We are the product of a mirage, the ghosts of a ghost town, the result of the carnivals.

 

Listeners, this is not an end. It is not a death. I feel as if it is a transition, as if rather than this taking us from life to death it has in fact taken us in a whole new direction. The eternal pine forest around the town has spread its roots within the city itself. The living are no longer living, and the dead are no longer dead, come to rejoin us. Ghosts and trees alike, we are together. The pine outside by radio studio window is rustling in the gentle, heated breeze. I hold my hand up and see the needles of the tree tangled in a swirling mass through the heat haze, and I know it. Samina... listeners, intern Samina was planted as an eternal tree right outside my window!

 

The Conifer Council has announced that we are free to leave our homes, Pine Cliff, as the carnival has left and the sun is setting. The great beast in the sky is lowering its eye below the horizon, and the heat is dissipating into the colder evening air. Camila, having scored just under par on the Eternal Rock Golf Course, is returning to her home to test some rock samples from the course. Lars Leavengood – out on the edge of town – is returning to his post on the edge of the northernmost cliff to hit any would-be carnival creators with golf balls, and Betty Sampson has finished cleaning the bottomless pit on hole ten of the course, and is going back to sleep in her house, located in the middle of the eighth hole. I, Lily, am going outside to give Samina some water from the station breakroom.

 

Pine Cliff, today marks a great day in our history. It is the day Pine Cliff became the survivors of a carnival. It is the third day Lars Leavengood has defended his title of Town Golfer. It is the first day we have defied death, and the last day we have lived. This whole 'ghost' thing comes with a fair few advantages in that area. Wait, can we go through walls?

 

_[clunk]_

 

Listeners, lie in your beds tonight knowing we have beaten death, we have beaten a carnival, we have beaten the Eternal Rock Golf Course, but know this: we will never overcome plasterboard walls.

Good night, Pine Cliff, goodnight.

 

 

_Proverb: She had curves in all the wrong places. There shouldn't be that many hips or knees. Her head and thorax shouldn't be fused. She had curves in all the places spiders do. Actually, you know what? I think she's a spider. You should probably run._

 

 


End file.
